What Rauner really walked into

Gov. Bruce Rauner arrives for a press conference to respond to Speaker of the House, Michael J. Madigan's decision not to introduce budget bill in this session. The legislature convened for a 10-day special session on Wednesday, June 21. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats in Springfield are engaged in a continuous game of tag and "not 'it,'" blaming each other for the state's disastrous finances. Certainly at this point, all sides deserve some blame.

Today, though, we're exploring the frequent Democratic claim that in a cooperative Springfield, lawmakers used to settle on balanced budgets without histrionics. Then that dastardly Rauner came along in January 2015, and look, two years without budgets!

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A little history illuminates what Rauner walked into and what he's up against. It will be a theme of the 2018 gubernatorial election:

Not all voters will recall the hundreds of millions of dollars in pork projects that were jammed into the budgets of former Gov. George Ryan, former Senate President James "Pate" Philip and House Speaker Michael Madigan. Those budgets included money for hockey rinks, baseball fields, swimming pools and millions in questionable spending.

Ryan's budgets also relied heavily on borrowing. By 2002, his final year in office, lawmakers refused to put away the confetti. They sent him a budget that was out of balance by $1.4 billion — and left town.

By 2003, when Rod Blagojevich was governor and his party controlled both legislative chambers, the Democrats balanced the budget by dipping into state funds set aside for other purposes. They also agreed to sell $10 billion in pension bonds. Borrowing, again: Pretend you have revenue, spend it, worry tomorrow.

The next year, Blagojevich got fed up and accused lawmakers of spending like "drunken sailors." He called a special session. Madigan adjourned the House after 23 minutes.

Blagojevich's budget for 2006 was only balanced, if you want to use that word, through a risky decision by him, then-Senate President Emil Jones and Madigan to use the state's pension money to pay other expenses. Same deal for 2007. Republicans squawked, but as the minority party could not stop the diversion of pension funds.

Into his second term and shortly before his arrest, Blagojevich still was battling with a legislature that sent him a budget $2 billion short. "It's unconstitutional. It's irresponsible. It's misleading. You'd have to be out of your mind to sign a budget like that. ... It would be like signing a check that I knew would bounce," he said in 2008.

When Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn stepped into the governorship, Madigan and the new Senate president, John Cullerton, at one point called Quinn "irrelevant," sent him unbalanced budgets and went home. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, more failure. Not a single full-year balanced spending plan.

So: Has state government's fiscal condition worsened under Rauner? Yes, it has, largely because he won't go along with budget gimmicks and because he wants reforms that would give employers confidence in Illinois' economic climate and future governance. Was Springfield a Utopia of comity and balanced budgets in the decades before voters elected him to shake up the town? That's the fiction some rival politicians now peddle.

Like we said, all sides deserve blame. But if you want to portion it out fairly, don't forget the whack-a-doo years before this governor took office.